I said goodbye to one life and hello to another, a chapter that has yet to be written. And in the spirit of change, I was equal parts scared and excited, an intoxicating elixir of emotions that carried me across the threshold as I reinvented myself in a transformational year.

Hawai'i stands to lose nearly 50,000 people, more than 25,000 jobs and $1.35 billion in total economic impact by 2020, if we do not step up to keep thousands of soldiers and their families here in the islands.

In 2011, a year after turning 50, we quit our jobs, sold our house and gave away most of our possessions to travel around the world for what we thought would be one year. But after learning how to live much more simply we are still on the road three years later, global nomads with no home, no fixed address.

let's shift our focus just a bit. Let's evaluate ourselves at the end of the weekend on the fun we have had, on the joy in the home, and the memories made, and not on how clean the house is or how much we've checked off of our list.

In the end, Ernst concludes, both the U.S. and China have a strong interest in finding a compromise during the APEC Summit. From the U.S. perspective, a mini ITA-2 without China would be an oxymoron. Not only is China the world biggest smart-phone market, it is also by far the most important market for U.S. semiconductor firms.

I'm optimistic about the future of the Hawaii fashion industry, but there are still many challenges. Though we love the weather here, the lack of seasons makes it difficult to design and find a market for more than just the resort wear and spring/summer seasons.

Ari Phillips at Climate Progress. Three major companies - Cisco Systems, 3M, and Kimberly Clark - announced they will now give employees a deeply discounted way of buying or leasing solar panels for their homes. Sunny news, indeed!

While I love the #WhyImVoting hashtag, it's pretty clear to me that until #WhyI'mRunning is more of a thing, it's going to be an uphill battle to pass legislation that makes family life frankly more livable.